Garden Wildlife Can Be Enticed By A Few Snacks
If you wish to invite wildlife into your garden, believe me, all it takes is planting enough stuff and they’ll come - small birds, deer, quail, pheasants, gophers, rabbits, frogs, squirrels, mosquitoes and wasps.
If that’s not enough, you can throw in a few moose, foxes, marmots, porcupines, raccoons, snakes and lizards. Some you may find as permanent residents, some merely drifters and some only when the pickin’s are good.
May I introduce you to a few of our backyard guests.
The permanent residents are small birds of assorted varieties, a few families of quail, pheasant and pocket gophers, along with mosquitoes and various wasps.
I spend a great deal of time trying to lure small birds into the garden. We have an assortment of birdhouses and bird condos scattered about the yard - some nailed to trees and posts, others resting in crotches of large tree limbs.
Though there are birds that have built nests in a few of the houses, most of my birds seem to want to live on the edge. They prefer the dead Christmas tree, open spots on low branches or on the ground. All are places where Lewis, the cat, need not exert herself chasing down dinner.
Even so, I try to maintain AAA accommodations for my feathered friends. There are plenty of plants for shelter and protection - evergreens with branches near the ground and thorny bushes for tiny birds to hide. Even the food sources seem plentiful - lots of berries and bugs. And how do they thank me?
The incessant chatter begins every morning around 4 o’clock. All the birds in the kingdom must flock to the tree outside our bedroom window, each one singing its own version of reveille. They may fancy themselves as the wake-up callers in a Disney movie, but I’ve got news for them: They’re not lovable, little, animated bluebirds, and I am not Cinderella.
The working daylight hours aren’t much better. If you come within 50 feet of their nests, they’ll swoop at you and squawk continuously until even the cat folds her ears down and takes a hike in frustration.
Yet, even with all their chattering and squawking, they are worth it. It’s fun to watch them tug a big worm out of the grass, splash about in the birdbath or simply dine at the feeder.
I also like to lure a few of the big birds into the yard, especially quail. It’s not uncommon to see 30 or 40 of them parade single-file across the lawn, moving from one feeding area to another. They remind me of a group of Victorian-era ladies in long, starched dresses and plummed hats scurrying along with their children in tow. A dad always stands guard, ready to sound the alarm if danger is approaching. With one cry, they all take flight for the nearest evergreen tree, disappearing deep within the branches.
Along with the quail, it’s always a thrill to see a big rooster pheasant strutting by, even though I know full well he’s headed straight for the corn bed. Last night we even spotted a big owl atop a distant pine tree. He was not a great comfort though for the cat, the gophers or the mice.
Some of the wild creatures that recently have passed through (or slithered through) the garden: a moose grazing in the field across the road from us, a bull snake (harmless, but definitely not something you wish to run into), a lizard basking in a rainforest of tomato plants in the hot bed, and skunks. Though we haven’t actually seen skunks, we know they’ve been around.
The creatures that come a calling when dinner is on are deer, raccoons and squirrels.
Though we’ve only been visited once by deer, once was enough to see the damage these beautiful creatures can inflict upon trees and shrubs. For that matter, just about anything that grows seems to be fair game for them. They strip trees bare of leaves, rub the bark off trunks and paw up flowers.
Gardeners will try just about anything to keep them out of the yard. They’ll spray plants with a mixture of eggs and water; they’ll decorate the trees with dozens of little bags of human hair, soap and wild animal feces; they’ll set radios out all night on full blast, build towering fences and keep Rover out all night on sentry duty. Yet, the deer still come.
Squirrels are no better. These charming little peanut eaters also devour fruit, nuts, flowers and bulbs. They cause more power outages than fallen branches. Like birds, they can be a bit on the messy side, dropping inedible portions of their bounty onto anything that may happen to be below them.
Deer and squirrels are so bad that whole books have been written detailing methods of deterring them: “Preventing Deer Damage” by Robert G. Juhre and “Outwitting Squirrels” by Bill Adler, Jr.
The secret to wanting and having wildlife in your garden is to provide them with nesting areas and plenty to nibble on. Be tolerant and have a good sense of humor. And I am always amazed at how much work I can accomplish when I get up with the birds.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Phyllis Stephens The Spokesman-Review